Mixtapemotions

  • “Winter Winds” by Mumford & Sons, Friday, January 19, 2024

     

    Mumford & Sons changed the direction of alternative music. As Stephen Christian of Anberlin once lamented, the direction of the genre had been pushing heavier and heavier music until the year when Mumford came onto the scene, Alternative shifted to folk sounds. The band fronted by Marcus Mumford swept the scene when they re-leased Sigh No More in 2009, with a sound that crossed over to Billboard’s Hot 100. The plucking sounds of banjos and mandolins may have sounded refreshing on the radio to late ‘00 ears, but when WatchMojo.com compiled a list of bands whose songs sound the same, Mumford earned an honorable mention. The band would eventually break with the formula, but Sigh No More showcases Mumford’s signature sound.


    AS THE WINTER WINDS LITTER LONDON… “Winter Winds” was Mumford and Sons’ second single. The song was overshadowed by the band’s first single, “Little Lion Man.” On an album that sounds fairly the same, “Winter Winds” stood out most to me. Musically, the band slows down their tempo and adds a trumpet, creating almost a mariachi band sound. Lyrically, the song feels honest in a less abstract way than the band’s bigger hit from the album. Telling a story of loneliness and a hookup, the song takes a peek into the songwriter’s soul. The longing for love is existential: the speaker feels distant from everyone even in his hometown. It reminds him about his early experience with religion: “Oh, the shame that sent me away from the God that I once loved.” According to lead singer Marcus Malcom, the song is about being alone around Christmas in his hometown of London. Longing for a human connection, he turned to meaningless sex, but his soul is longing for something deeper. 

    WAS IT LOVE OR THE FEAR OF THE COLD THAT LED US THROUGH THE NIGHT?  Praised by Plugged In, with the exception of the f-bomb on “Little Lion Man,” Mumford & Sons’ Sigh No More tends to be easily digestible to Christian audiences. The conservative publication even praised “Winter Winds” for trying to “suss out life’s meaning by looking at it from the perspective of death,” referring to the last verse of the song. Last week, when I was encountering the great city of London for the first time, I, too, couldn’t help but think about how finite we are. As I stood in the 1000+ year-old city, looking at the tombs of monarchs and poets in Westminster Abbey, I thought about how many generations had come and gone before I could stand in that spot. I thought about how an American of some English descent could travel from his working place where he and his partner reside—South Korea—to stand in the first empire on earth that could boast “where the sun doesn’t set.” And from that time, the world felt much older than I had ever expected. Now I could only imagine if I was feeling that way, all alone at Christmastime in the magnificent city. I’d probably be on Grindr to put that feeling in perspective!











  • "The Coldest Heart" by The Classic Crime, Thursday, January 18, 2024 (repost)

    I talked before about how Albatross, The Classic Crime‘s debut album was set to be the breakthrough mainstream album for both the band and for Tooth & Nail Records. And of course, neither of those happened because someone at iTunes or Tooth & Nail or EMI or any combination released this record in the genre “Christian Rock.” Of the two 2006 secular signings of Tooth & Nail, Jonezetta avoided Christian radio, but The Classic Crime admitted defeat and even embraced the genre. With an album like Albatross, it would be hard to hear the songs and not think of Christian Rock. “The Coldest Heart” is a bit Calvinistic for the general music listener.

    A COUPLE OF TEARS AND I’M A BROKEN MESS. “The Coldest Heart” belongs to a sub-genre of Christian Rock I’ve heard called “Shamecore,” a term coined by licensed professional counselor Krispin Mayfield on his podcast The Prophetic Imagination Station.  Shamecore comes from a Calvinist interpretation of the Bible, and verses like Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things” with a focus on the depravity of the human condition as an inescapable reality without the grace of Christ’s sacrifice. Many Christian denominations and congregations take these teachings to the extreme. Pastors demand that their followers examine their hearts and surrender everything to Christ. Lay down your thoughts, your plans, and your ambitions. Let Christ mold you into who he wants you to be. Beat yourself down with humility. When you think you’re doing well, check your intentions. Your righteousness was nothing more than filthy rags to God. And there was a constant soundtrack reinforcing this. So often these songs had to do with sexual purity, like Anberlin‘s “Feel Good Drag” or Seventh Day Slumber‘s “Innocence,” but it could also be about perfection. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Songs like “Everything You’ve Ever Wanted” by Hawk Nelson, “Mirror” by BarlowGirl, and “Don’t Look at Me” by Stacie Orrico all propitiated this idea that self-worth was found in Christ alone. Paper Route‘s “Are We All Forgotten?” asks the question “If we’ve all forgotten you, are we all forgotten too?”

    I WAS BLIND TO THE THINGS I DID. I’m not talking about this to be sacrilegious. On the contrary, I believe that faith can be healthy. But one of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn’t try harder to accomplish my dreams. I felt manipulated by my upbringing. “God doesn’t want you to go to that college or study that,” was in the back of my mind. God called me to Missionary College where I would study English literature and become an Adventist teacher. I couldn’t imagine allowing myself to go to the much cheaper, much easier to transfer to state
    schools. Why? Because there was drinking and weekend hook-ups. There my faith would be tested. I bought into the idea that college could be a time when I would build up immunity to what the world offered. I would learn about my faith deeply and be equipped to fight against the damned world. What was my alternative? I was scared that at state school I would surely succumb to the life of drinking and partying and I would probably just become gay. But going to Adventist College really just put me behind because all of that would happen anyway. But I certainly learned a lot about Adventist teachings.

  • "I Already See It" by Kye Kye, Wednesday, January 17, 2024 (repost)

    Kye Kye released two albums in the early 2010s. My earliest memory with this indie-electronic band was their single “Broke” on  RadioU, which took a while to grow on their listenership, failing to beat the other singles of the week on their “Battle of the Buzz” program. However, when the single was finally released to regular rotation, it quickly topped their “TMW” (Ten Most Wanted) program. That summer, I saw the band perform at Cornerstone in the Come & Live tent before or after Showbread. Lead singer, Olga Yagolnikov Phelan, seemed a little shy when talking to the audience, but the band sounded great week on their “Battle of the Buzz” program. However, when the single was finally released to regular rotation, it quickly topped their “TMW” (Ten Most Wanted) program. That summer, I saw the band perform at Cornerstone in the Come & Live tent before or after Showbread. Lead singer, Olga Yagolnikov Phelan, seemed a little shy when talking to the audience, but the band sounded great when performing. The band’s strength lies in their atmospheric sound rather than their spiritually cryptic lyrics. 

     released two albums in the early 2010s. My earliest memory with this indie-electronic band was their single “Broke” on RadioU, which took a while to grow on their listenership, failing to beat the other singles of the week on their “Battle of the Buzz” program. However, when the single was finally released to regular rotation, it quickly topped their “TMW” (Ten Most Wanted) program. That summer, I saw the band perform at Cornerstone in the Come & Live tent before or after Showbread. Lead singer, Olga Yagolnikov Phelan, seemed a little shy when talking to the audience, but the band sounded great when performing. The band’s strength lies in their atmospheric sound rather than their spiritually cryptic lyrics. 


    TAKE YOUR TIME; I ALREADY SEE IT. One Saturday night in college some of my friends and I were invited to one of our professor’s homes. That night the professor taught us a game involving classic issues of National Geographic and a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. This game you had to learn by observation and once you learn the rules, you demonstrate but never say the rules out loud. I watched as my friends started catching on little by little, some catching on quickly, while others were just as frustrated as me. I was the very last one to figure out the game, so my frustration must have given so much joy to everyone in the know. The story of that Saturday night has come to be a metaphor for my old ways of thinking. I used to think that I had the world figured out. I had made some connections when looking at the enigma of classic National Geographic magazines lying on the floor. My religion had helped me interpret the Bible correctly and there was a long history of literature, philosophy, and culture that was just reacting to false religions. If only we could put the parts together. If only we could put aside the human problem with religion, we could solve the puzzle and be at one with the divine.

    IT DOESN’T COME AT ONCE. I grew up with the teaching of progressive revelation. This is a Christian idea in many denominations and a central doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist church that teaches that God doesn’t reveal truth all at once. For Adventists, this explains a clean lineage from Martin Luther to the teachings of Ellen White, collecting only the legalistic aspects of John Calvin. Other churches use progressive revelation to excuse the church’s historical defense of slavery. However, as we are now living in a time of rapid changes in beliefs about wealth inequality, race, gender, and sexuality, the Church continues to be a bulwark behind what those in power hide. Rather than saying that revelation and truth is progressive, the church should rather say, those with white hair will soon be dead. The ones whom the older bigots haven’t run away will have slightly more progressive ideas as times and circumstances allow and will come to power as their hair is turning white. And over time, the church can pretend its atrocities never even happened because the old guard has died off. The most shocking example is the Adventist church in Nazi Germany siding with Hitler. History is carefully forgotten. The organized Church, no matter how you put the pieces together comes up with the same results. And while times seem chaotic, I keep coming back to what I think the central message of this song is: “Love is accepted.” Despite whatever the wrongs “the haters” do, love is about accepting someone no matter what journey they go on. Love is not about subjecting others to your wills. It’s about the journey together. 

  • “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac, Tuesday, January 16, 2024 (updated repost)

    Fleetwood Mac‘s best known record is Rumors, their 1977 album featuring the vocals of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. However, these members had been recent additions. Formed in 1967 in the UK with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John “Mac” McVie, the band went through numerous iterations before arriving on the pop charts with their most well-known line up. The subject matter of the hit album is the relationship drama behind the scenes with the band. It’s truly a fascinating story of change and rock ‘n’ roll development that saw the band change from a ’60s blues rock band to a late ’70s hitmaker, with a guitarist who left due to schizophrenia, another guitarist abandoning the group while on tour to join a California sex-evangelism cult, a turbulent marriage between the keyboardist Christine McVie and bass player, and then there’s Stevie Nick.

    WE CAN CALL IT ANOTHER LONELY DAY. I don’t have much memory of “Go Your Own Way” when I was growing up. Released 10 years before I was born, it would have been played on classic rock stations, but even when my mom started listening to classic rock in the car, I don’t remember hearing this song. However, I do remember both my mom and dad changed the channel whenever Fleetwood Mac came on the radio. They said they heard too much of this album back in the late ’70s. My mom’s friend listened to it on repeat, so she had heard it enough for a lifetime. My first memory of this song is from the Forest Gump soundtrack. But the memory of this song is about a trip to Florida in mid-July 2012. I was going down to Florida by myself for the first time. I was going to stay with my grandfather and visit my friends. River was getting married, and it was a kind of a college reunion of a lot of my friends. My college was fed by many Adventist high schools, and many of my friends had graduated from the Adventist high school in Orlando, which coincidentally was my mom’s hometown. Several occasions over summer vacation I visited my Orlando friends, and this would be the last of these trips before going to Korea.

    IF I COULD, MAYBE I’D GIVE YOU MY WORLD. “Go Your Own Way” is a break up song sung by two members in a band who hooked up, dated, then went their own way. Fleetwood Mac continued with their classic lineup into the ‘80s. They’d fight, threaten to break up, someone would leave, then come back again. The band was more like a dysfunctional family with a bond that kept them together. I think about the reasons I chose to “Go My Own Way” and what my family may think about it. Today, I’m departing from London. It’s been a great trip, and I’ll certainly write more later. Until then go your own way, and meet me back when I get back on the land!

  • “Blue Monday” (Live at Alexandra Palace) by New Order, Monday, January 15, 2024 (repost)

    New Order formed in 1980 after the three remaining members of the post-punk band Joy Division lost their lead singer Ian Curtis to suicide. Success wasn’t instant for New Order with the start of the new band. New Order’s sound was distinct from Joy Division’s with the inclusion of keyboardist  Gillian Gilbert and a growing penchant for synthesizers and electronic dance music. The band’s breakthrough success came prior to the release of their second record, Power, Lies & Corruption with the release of their long-play (12″) single “Blue Monday,” which took dance clubs around the world by storm, and even helped to fund the band’s own dance club in Manchester called The Haçienda, a dance club named after the word for a Spanish plantation.  


    I SEE A SHIP IN THE HARBOUR. New Order spent time in the clubs in New York listening to the latest disco prior to recording their sophomore album Power, Lies & Corruption.  According to lead singer Bernard Sumner, the music in those clubs produced tones he had never heard before. The band then set a new goal: they wanted to produce a hit that could be heard in dance halls. So the band got to work back in England at one of Pink Floyd‘s studios using outdated ’70s recording technology to produce their ultramodern 1983 classics. “Blue Monday” was a feat of layering rhythms and synthesizers. The band felt that the song didn’t fit musically or thematically on their second record, so they decided to release the song as a 12″ single prior to the LP’s release. “Blue Monday” was a smash hit and became the biggest selling 12″ single of all time. The band received mainstream success in the UK, even performing on Top of the Pops. But because “Blue Monday” relied so much on programming, it wasn’t a very interesting song to watch live. “Blue Monday” uses repetition and slight variance in that repetition to keep the audience in a trance-like state. The 7:29 song was a barrier for listening for me at first, but now I barely notice that the time has passed! 

    I THOUGHT I WAS MISTAKEN. Like most of New Order’s songs, the lyrics are only a distant second to the importance of the music. The lyrics about a narcissistic listener who gaslights the speaker starts to become clear with more listens. Sumner said that the title comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, but the lyrics don’t seem to match the book’s themes. Blue Monday is a day, according to pop psychology, on which many suicides take place. Blue Monday is the third Monday of the year, and after the excitements and disappointments from the holiday season coming to an end, may people experience a sadness or depression strong on that day. The song was created by a band composed of heterosexuals inspired by the music of gay clubs. The track is a huge hit in clubs both gay and straight, and established New Order, not as a hit-making machine, but a creditable dance/rock band nonetheless. “Blue Monday” became  the standard for DJs from the ’80s to today, influencing Pet Shop Boys to Skrillex. In a way, the song helped to define the EDM music of multiple eras and has been interloped in songs such as Britney Spears‘ “Work Bitch” and more notably in Rihanna‘s “Shut Up and Drive.” I guess with beats like this, it’s not an average Monday after all!

    Live:


    Single version (1983):




  • "All of Me Wants All of You" (Helado Negro Remix) by Sufjan Stevens, Sunday, January 14, 2024 (updated post)

    Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Steven‘s 2015 masterpiece, is a quintessential portrait of dealing with grief and forgiveness when I wrote about the first two tracks, “Death with Dignity,” and “Should Have Known Better.” By the third track on the record, “All of Me Wants All of You,” explores grief in a different way from the previous two tracks. As with most songs on the album, “All of Me” appears to be deeply personal to the artist. But being personal doesn’t stop this track’s language from being the most obscured with allusions to geography and possibly an allegory from a little-known Spanish play.

    ALL OF ME THINKS LESS OF YOU. There’s a debate on Lyrics Genius about the meaning of this song, especially surrounding the identity of the only other character mentioned by name in this song, Manelich. Is he the one the song is about? Until last year’s Javelin,  Stevens has written vaguely about homosexual attraction throughout his discography; however, the Christian imagery he uses in his songs have certain listeners saying that the perceived homosexual elements in his music are just elaborate metaphors for Christian allegories. Another interpretation is that song is written from another point of view and that Manelich is Sufjan himself, and he’s referencing a 1896 Catalan play Terra Baixa (Marta of the Lowlands), which was made into a film in 1914. In the play, goatherd Manelich is duped into marrying his master’s daughter, Marta, who was abused by her father. This may account for the exasperated line “Manelich, I feel so used,” as Manelich was used in the master’s twisted plot. 

    YOU CHECKED YOUR MESSAGES WHILE I MASTURBATED.  As one Genius commenter points out, this debate between whether the song is queer or Christian misses the point. Straight or queer, the relationship described in the song seems to fit into what Stevens said in an interview with Pitchfork in 2015. Stevens said,  “In lieu of her death, I felt a desire to be with her, so I felt like abusing drugs and alcohol and fucking around a lot and becoming reckless and hazardous was my way of being intimate with her.” “All of Me” shows the singer in an unhealthy relationship or pattern of relationships he can’t fully commit to, but he wants to at times. Stevens’ grief and self-destruction was unlike anything the singer had done before. Essentially, while his mother was dying, the singer was in his most avant-garde phase with The Age of Adz. A Sufjan Stevens fan podcast called this extravagant tour with all of its costumes and synthesizers a “masturbatory period” in Stevens’ musical career, and possibly his personal life, too. Today’s song helps us to realize that grief can look strange. In our grief we can hurt other people and make horrible choices, romantic or otherwise in our grief. But ultimately, we just want Manelich to hold us and wipe away our tears. Is he capable of that, though?

  • “Run Away with Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen (updated repost), Saturday, January 13, 2024

     When your first American hit is the second biggest song of the year, how do you follow that up? When your signature song has been called bubblegum and immature, how do you change your image to show that you’re an adult with adult relationships, without getting X-rated? These were two questions Carly Rae Jepsen answered in her follow up to Kiss in E-MO-TION. If those two questions were on the interview, Jespsen would have the job on the merits of her 2015 effort. And as I enter the fifth year of my playlists and the third year of the blog, there are certain perennial favorites that show up maybe too often for some. I chose “Run Away with Me” at the beginning of the year for four of those years because of the fresh renewal this song gives me as my winter vacation begins.

    YOU’RE STUCK IN MY HEAD, STUCK IN MY HEART, STUCK IN MY BODY. Sure, if your introduction to E-MO-TION was the first single “I Really Like You” turned you off as another “Call Me Maybe” so you never clicked “Add to Library” on the rest of the album, that’s an understandable mistake. The meme-able first single arguably is less dynamic in the wake of its massive hit predecessor “Call Me Maybe.” But while critics were divided on “I Really Like You,” E-MO-TION as a whole received mostly favorable reviews, holding a 77% on Metacritic and a 9.0, or “universal acclaim,” according to user reviews. Unfortunately, “I Really Like You” was the most successful single from the album, and that track failed to reach #1 as “Call Me Maybe” had. The album’s other singles didn’t do well on radio. “Run Away with Me”didn’t make the Top 40 in America, though it did better in Europe, and “Your Type” only charted in Canada. Still, critics praised the album, and though “Run Away with Me” didn’t chart well, it made many pop critics year-end lists and even end-of-decade lists. 

    OVER THE WEEKEND, WE COULD TURN THE WORLD TO GOLD. “Run Away with Me” is on my short list of songs–perhaps an upcoming playlist–that the moment I hear it, I know I’m going to have a good day. It’s particularly effective when my bags are packed, and I’m expecting something good to happen. E-MO-TION was the album I listened to in 2016 and 2017 when I was in need of an adventure. When I needed to get away from my on-campus housing and explore or figure out how to do something in Korea. The pandemic, of course, has taken that joy–the unexpected shopping trips or checking out a new cafe or restaurant. And what could be better than spending a day in Brighton, the beautiful city by the sea? Whatever you’re up to this weekend, I hope you are enjoying the new year. Life is too short to spend it worrying about fulfilling resolutions. It’s time to be living it!

    Read “Run Away With Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen on Genius


    Music video:



    Behind the scenes: 



    Simlish version from The Sims 4: Get Together:







  • "Rush" by Troye Sivan + Top 23 Songs of 2023 (#20-15), Friday, January 12, 2024

    I’m in no rush to finish my post of my top 23 songs of last year. I’m taking my sweet time. But it’s Friday night, and I’m in Soho so I thought I’d post a little bit more, most notably some of the more dance-oriented tracks of the year. The three I posted on New Year’s Day were closer to honorable mentions, but the songs I picked in 20-15 are great but lacking something from pushing them up a little higher–and that something in many cases is the lyrical depth found on songs a little higher on the list. But feeling the rush of a song is certainly a big part of why we like music. Let’s enjoy the weekend!

    20. “Padam, Padam” by Kylie Minogue kicks off the top 20. I was a little late to the new club classic last year. Listening to a breakdown of the song on Switched On Pop made the very simple song gave me a huge appreciation for not only it, but then I had to listen to Tension, the album Minogue released, and I started revisiting her back catalog. A worthy challenger to “Padam, Padam” is the second single, “Hold On to Now.”


    19. “If You Were a Song” by Abbey Cone. I listened to a lot of Country on Spotify at the end of the year. I should say that I skipped my way around a lot of Country playlists on Spotify. There were a few songs I listened to and this was one of them. It’s clichè in the best ways possible and something about it made me feel like I was in my hometown. I also briefly wrote about Ashley Cooke’s “Shot in the Dark” which would probably make it into my Top 30. 

    18. “From the Start.” by Laufey. Remember when Ryan Gosling saved Jazz? Remember when Norah Jones brought Jazz back into the mainstream? Well, last year may have not been big for Jazz, but the biggest Jazz song of the year came from Laufey, who broke into the mainstream with a fusion of Classical, Jazz, and pop. “From the Start” may become a lounge classic. I think the classically-trained cellist, multi-instrumentalist Icelandic/Chinese singer-songwriter has a lot of potential. I hope to see her higher on the list in the coming years. 

    17. “I Feel Like Dancing” by Jason Mraz. This might be the only case of an artist I got into after first being introduced to and disdaining their biggest song. I hated “I’m Yours,” but I got into the rest of Jason Mraz’s discography. But then I forgot he existed until last year when he released a truly infectious dance song. Damn, who doesn’t feel like dancing to this? Especially after watching the music video.


    16. “Goddess” by Pvris. There’s an abrasive pop sound that Pvris, now just vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Lynn Gunn, is chasing. I didn’t connect with 2023’s Evergreen as well as their previous work, 2020’s Use Me. Gunn seems to be dealing with the demons of the music industry–sexism and homophobia–as well as with her own identity in songs like “Goddess,” which asks “Is she a wo- or a man? / I’m a motherfucking brand.” Many of the tracks are catchy but lack the smooth, grooving musicality of the band’s previous work. And the grotesque image on the cover of Gunn’s severed head kind of put me off the album. In July, I wrote about “I DON’T WANNA DO THIS ANYMORE,” but I was also addicted to the song “Goddess” around that time too. It was like if P!nk went really hard and was accepted on the rock charts. 


    15. “Rush” by Troye Sivan. I’m torn between “Rush” and “Got Me Started.” Both tracks feel like a return to big-production pop. But this 2023 return of pop is more authentic because it is unabashedly queer. But I think “Rush” is the more important song of the year, compared to the follow-up single. Whereas “Padam, Padam” may have been the queer anthem that brought everyone back to the club in the summer, “Rush” kept the party going and helped to solidify Sivan as, as Saturday Night Live parodies, “Gay Famous.” “Rush” is a song about escapism and getting back to normal, as the club becomes a place to forget your worries.




  • "You're All I Have" by Snow Patrol (repost), Thursday, January 11, 2024

    Formed in 1994 first as Shrug and then as Polarbear but finally changing their name to Snow Patrol due to other bands by their former names, the Northern Irish band became very popular in the early ’00s. Their first single “Run” was a hit in the UK. But in America, the band would become famous because of their song “Chasing Cars” when it was included in the season 2 finale of Grey’s Anatomy. “Chasing Cars” is the song most people know by Snow Patrol, and most wouldn’t be able to associate the name with their hit song. The band continues to produce music, most recently releasing 2018’s Wildness.  

    TRAIN THIS CHAOS, TURN IT INTO LIGHT. If you’ve had time to get into Taylor’s Version of Red, you may have noticed a feature by Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody. Once the Indie Rock band became recognized, the band members started working on pop music, and Lightbody writing for Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. The Snow Patrol singer and songwriter began writing poetry after being inspired by when his English teacher introduced him to the work of Seamus Heaney. After being published as a poet, Lightbody turned to music as his artistic release. As a teen growing up in the ’80s, his writing was concerned with the “Troubles”–the conflict on the Irish Island, a topic that poets such as William Butler Yeats addressed and Irish rock bands like U2 and The Cranberries sang about. In a podcast speaking about the band’s latest album, 
    Wildness, Lightbody talks about how Northern Ireland was closed off when he was growing up, so he had little thought about the world as a whole. He said that “there was no world news. Northern Ireland had enough news.” As he grew up, though, and as the situation improved between the nation of Ireland and the UK territory of Northern Ireland, Lightbody began to look beyond his home, and Snow Patrol set their sights on universal themes, of love and breaking up.

    A FRIGHTENING MAGIC I CLING TO.  My first impression of Snow Patrol, from their 2006 hit “Chasing Cars” was a cool British rock band that “has to be better than this?” I thought “Chasing Cars” was quite a dull song, aiming very hard to be profound. This was long before I binged 17 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy in 2020, so the emotional weight that a song like “Chasing Cars” can have in the right context can give new value to the song. And while the song was also featured in season 6 of Smallville, it came at a time in the show when all of the emotion of the show had dried up. But in college, I happened to get my hands on a copy of Eyes Open. I tried the album a few times, and I only liked “You’re All I Have.” I couldn’t stand Lightbody’s voice. Today, when I listened to a podcast talking about this album, I was brought back to my first impressions of it. The first-time listeners to Eyes Open had a similar review, criticizing the boring music and monotonous lyrics. They called the band “a less good Coldplay” and a dark and dreary band like Death Cab for Cutie, only less poetic. However, after college, this album grew on me. More of a focus on the instruments would have been better, but the dismal sounds of the record–like the exhaust on the snow, like a grey day that you hope will turn–encompasses an emotion. It may be a boring emotion, but it’s human. And if you come from a place where the snow piles up this time of year, and are suffering from crippling seasonal depression, listen to the album with caution. “You’re All I Have” is the gleam of hope before you start that journey into the album.

    Read “You’re All I Have” by Snow Patrol on Genius. 

  • “Enchanted” by Taylor Swift, Wednesday, January 10, 2024

    In December, I was among millions to receive a kiss from Taylor Swift as she thanked her Spotify listeners for being their top artist for 2023. “Doesn’t matter which era you were listening to, I’m just very grateful to be on your Spotify Wrapped,” Taylor says and then kisses the camera. I’ve talked about Swift a lot in the four years of my blog, but my appreciation for her catalog isn’t equal in the amount of love I give to every era. In fact, it was the beginning of her prolific period starting with 2008’s Fearless that the fandom wasn’t for me, yet there was something indescribably resonant with her childish songwriting. I was in college and music was readily available. Yet, somehow, even though Swift became more of a celebrity with the follow up, 2010’s Speak Now, I had little memory of the album in real time. And by 2012’s Red, I just remember hearing the hits. During this album cycle, I moved to Korea and really stopped paying attention to pop music.

    THIS NIGHT IS SPARKLIN’; DON’T YOU LET IT GO. Around 2020, I started to resonate with Speak Now. Maybe it was the storytelling. Maybe it was my unadmitted love for country cliches. Songs like “Back to December” and “Sparks Fly” reminded me about what it felt like to be a young adult, experiencing what felt like unquenchable love. Emotions felt urgent back then, like if you didn’t act on them right away, you’d be banished to a life of being an old withered undesirable. And you felt like there was only one chance because you were fated to be with that one person. Of course Taylor Swift’s current songwriting reflects a disillusionment with Fearless, Speak Now, and Red. But when I started writing my blog, getting in touch with my memories of coming out, the sappy Taylor Swift songs brought me back to the time when I felt that the emotions that I had suppressed like a good Christian had to be let out at that moment. 

    Perhaps one of the best examples of that prefrontal cortex development in a song is “Enchanted.”

    THE LINGERING QUESTION KEPT ME UP; 2 AM WHO DO YOU LOVE?  Taylor Swift proposed that her third record be titled Enchanted, but Scott Borchetta, CEO of her record label, suggested that Swift name the album something more mature. As with the music video for “Bejeweled,” Swift still has a penchant for fairy tales, even in her mature writing. The song on which Taylor wanted to base her third record, though, has a very different fairy tale mood. “Bejeweled” is a song twinged on Swift’s revenge narrative and it possibly shows the singer falling out of love, as Swift broke off her six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn during the Midnights album cycle. “Enchanted,” though, is a song about falling in love with someone who is probably unattainable. I’d need to brush up on my Cosmopolitan  chronology of Swift’s dating life to begin to place this song in its context. Was this fantasy before or after John Mayer? Taylor Swift has alluded that “Enchanted” was about meeting Owl City’s Adam Young. Owl City even released a reply to the song, in which Young says, “Taylor, I was enchanted to meet you, too.” It’s funny to think about if the rumors of the infatuation were true. After Owl City’s duet with Carly Rae Jepsen, “Good Time,” the electronic pop act never returned to the pop charts. And according to Young, in 2015, he hadn’t heard from Taylor Swift after he wrote a response to “Enchanted.” Maybe it was the wrong A-D-A-M? Maybe the timing was wrong after John and Jake Gillenhaal, Calvin Harris, or someone else? Or maybe part of the magic of infatuation is gone when the feeling is mutual?